2016 is a Leap Year and the news is full of people who are turning 100 after celebrating only twenty-five actual birthdays. The passage of time has been measured in many ways and genealogists must adapt and account for traditions, scientific adjustments, and perceptual ways of measuring people’s ages. For instance, before about 1800, most …

Last year teacher Emily Phillips died and the obituary she wrote for herself went viral (Ed Mazza, “A Teacher Writes Her Own Obituary,” Huffington Post, 3 April 2015). A lot of people thought it was a terrific idea and anyone who read it has to agree. Among the classic lines it contained, “I was born, …

Governor William Bradford was an artful storyteller whose Of Plymouth Plantation chronicled the Pilgrims’ struggles from an eyewitness perspective. His retrospective account of the First Thanksgiving was just seven sentences dealing with the harvest of fish, waterfowl, turkeys, and Indian corn. Bradford says nothing about Massasoit and the ninety tribesmen who attended the three-day feast. …

The art of photo identification is an invaluable tool for genealogists who find unlabeled family images. The older the image, the more likely it has no caption since early formats such as daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes have metal or glass backs that don’t hold ink or pencil. Leading photo identification books promote different methods, but …

Without much fanfare, Ancestry.com has released the single most valuable record group for 20th century American research. The U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 contains 49 million entries for deceased Americans who applied for social security numbers in that time frame. Data contained on these SS-5 forms are supplied by the individuals applying …